The latest OCHA Humanitarian Update on south Sudan clearly indicates that “In the context of the upcoming January 2011 referendums, the humanitarian community is taking a number of steps to be prepared in the event of referendum-related violence”. OCHA and all other UN agencies active in humanitarian response in the country are very active in assessing the situation as the date of the referendum approaches.

In this connection UNOSAT is making a special effort to meet the requests of various agencies and ensure that its capabilities for satellite analysis and geographic information are put to full use to complement the efforts made by the entire humanitarian community to advocate in favour of avoiding that a humanitarian crisis results from the referenda as well as being prepared to face such a situation in a region already plagued by poverty and natural hazards.

According to OCHA Sudan “new humanitarian challenges and preparedness efforts for the January 2011 referendum continued to place strong demands on response partners” while “ humanitarian partners have focussed efforts on the prepositioning of supplies across six core life-saving pipelines in storage hubs throughout the South in order to ensure readiness for eventualities in early 2011”.

UNOSAT can be contacted by organizations interested in collaborating with their inputs and advice at this mail address